How To Find the Best Wedding Photographer in Calgary

Unlike the work of your other wedding vendors (music, flower arrangements, cake), photographs aren’t things you can hear, smell, taste or even see at first—you do not really understand what you are getting until after the fact. That means careful research and selectiveness regarding artistic style, professional abilities and personal demeanour are extra-important when selecting your wedding photographer in Calgary.

Task 1: Settle on a Style

Before you start researching photographers, you will need to first decide what sort of photography fashion you prefer, as that may help determine which photographer you will want shooting your wedding. Do the subsequent appeal for you?

Documentary: Rather than a set of posed photographs, these are candid or spontaneous graphics (read: not styled) of folks and decor. Before guests begin arriving, your motley crew of cousins dancing, or your bridesmaids laughing, the photographer will focus on raw candid shots. Having a purely photojournalistic photographer, you will very rarely see people staring at the camera— the memories are captured by the photos exactly as they occurred, and collectively they tell a story.

Portraiture: Should you prefer classic portraits (ie: your parents’ wedding album), plan on using a photographer who specializes in portraiture. These are modeled photos of you, your family and friends in front of varied backdrops. While some photographers will introduce subjects in more traditional spots (like in the ceremony altar or outside on the yard of the country club) and in more formal poses (standing as a group together), some photographers shoot “creative” portraiture having a more dramatic composition (the couple sitting on a lounge chair at their fashionable resort reception venue, or the couple holding hands in the centre of a nearby dirt road with all the mountains in the background).

Fine Art: This fashion provides the shooter greater artistic license to infuse their specific point of view and style into your pictures, though it’s much like documentary photography. So while the shots reflect reality, it’s the photographer’s reality. The pictures are dramatic and stunning, but are—or look like they were — shot with a more grainy, dreamier, more muted appearance on film. Generally the object (or couple) is in focus as well as the background seems to cloud. Motion also appears really natural in this fashion of photography. The few wedding photographers on earth who shoot only on picture tend to fall within this class, though some will do a combination of both, and generally they shoot in white and black. Having said that, a photographer utilizing this style can be still captured by a digicam with all camera lens and the proper gear. Plus some photographers will switch between digital and film.

Edgy-Bold: This type of photography, an offshoot of fine art, is marked by out-of-the-box, tilted angles (called “Dutch angles”) and non-traditional framing. So instead of a straight-on picture of the couple exchanging vows in the altar, the photograph might look leaned, with a candle in the foreground or an object like an altar arrangement. Even one portrait of a bridesmaid might be shot so whatever is behind her or the remaining space is filled with all the wall and that her face takes over just the bottom right of the picture.

Many wedding photographers can do a mixture of documentary and portraiture -style shots, and will do a mixture of black-and-white and colour pictures, but if there’s a particular style you love, make sure to focus on photographers who specialize in it.

Start your search by reading reviews from recent brides and browsing hundreds of local listings. Carefully review prospective photographers’ sites and sites to take a look at photos of other weddings they have shot, that will give you a notion of the style. The design of the site might also give hints about sensibility and the photographer’s nature to you. If possible, check out their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages too. Most importantly, are the responses from customers positive? How can the photographer react?

This can be not a choice made over the phone — you must meet with your prospective photographers . In the event you enjoy everything you see on their websites—and their fees are in your ballpark range—phone to find out if they are available on your wedding date. In case the photographer has already been reserved on your own date, you might ask them to refer you to one of the colleagues. Prepare yourself to discuss your vision for your wedding!